bettinalevyisdetermined:

aquilacalvitium:

humanjeff:

ronthedunedain:

humanjeff:

turing-tested:

turing-tested:

D:

this is a legitimate problem in robotics.

like, if you’re a bomb disposal guy and your team has a cool bomb-disposal robot which you’ve given a cutesy name to, you may hesitate to put that robot in harm’s way, which is NOT OPTIMAL in the bomb-disposing field.

it also doesn’t help if you hold funerals for the robots after they get exploded (this happens pretty regularly).

anyway nobody has worked out how to stop humans from pack-bonding with literally inanimate objects and they probably never will. (like even knowing it’s a problem, I *still* think those EOD robots deserve funerals).

In 2007, the US military rejected a multi-limbed anti-mine robot because it’s demise was too inhumane.

Bots on The Ground
In the Field of Battle (Or Even Above It), Robots Are a Soldier's Best Friend

By Joel Garreau
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 6, 2007

The most effective way to find and destroy a land mine is to step on it.

This has bad results, of course, if you're a human. But not so much if you're a robot and have as many legs as a centipede sticking out from your body. That's why Mark Tilden, a robotics physicist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, built something like that. At the Yuma Test Grounds in Arizona, the autonomous robot, 5 feet long and modeled on a stick-insect, strutted out for a live-fire test and worked beautifully, he says. Every time it found a mine, blew it up and lost a limb, it picked itself up and readjusted to move forward on its remaining legs, continuing to clear a path through the minefield.

Finally it was down to one leg. Still, it pulled itself forward. Tilden was ecstatic. The machine was working splendidly.

The human in command of the exercise, however -- an Army colonel -- blew a fuse.

The colonel ordered the test stopped.

Why? asked Tilden. What's wrong?

The colonel just could not stand the pathos of watching the burned, scarred and crippled machine drag itself forward on its last leg.

This test, he charged, was inhumane. ALT

oh perfect, this is EXACTLY what I was talking about

Scientists in films: this alien/AI is not human and therefore undeserving of any kindness or sympathy

Scientists irl: This is my friend Robob he’s five feet long, has ten legs and was built to explode mines and if anybody hurts him I will tear apart time and space to get revenge